A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard



Compare Poets

Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.

Poet A

Stephen Crane Stephen Crane

Poet B

William Ernest Henley William Ernest Henley
Compare two related contemporaries

A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.

Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 67% Poems 86% Blended 76%
Swap sides Another related pair
Stephen Crane

Stephen Crane

1 November 1871 – 5 June 1900 (~29)
3 live poems · English

Stephen Crane, born 1 November 1871 in Newark, New Jersey, and dead of tuberculosis on 5 June 1900 in Badenweiler, Germany, lived only twenty-eight years, yet his work altered the direction of American fiction, journalism, and poetry. He is commonly placed among the major writers of literary naturalism, beside such figures as Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser, but the label only partly contains him. Crane was at once…

“My chiefest desire was to write plainly and unmistakably, so that all men (and some women) might read and understand. That to my mind is good writing.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Modernist Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Sorrow, Despair
William Ernest Henley

William Ernest Henley

23 August 1849 – 11 July 1903 (~54)
8 live poems · English

William Ernest Henley was born on 23 August 1849 in Gloucester, England, and died on 11 July 1903 at Woking, Surrey. He occupies an unusual place in English literary history: widely remembered by the public for a single short poem, “Invictus,” yet far more consequential in his own age as a poet, editor, critic, journalist, dramatist, and formidable presence in literary society. Henley’s life was shaped by physical pa…

“Thus, for breadth and brilliance of conception, for energy and sweep of imagination, for the power of dealing as a master with the greater forces of nature, he is unsurpassed among modern men.”

Neighbourhood: Confessional Poets, Death & Mortality, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing

In time

Stephen Crane
William Ernest Henley
1849 1903
They overlapped for 30 years (1871–1900). When Stephen Crane was born, William Ernest Henley was about 22. William Ernest Henley was about 51 when Stephen Crane died.

On the map

About 5,428 km separate Newark, New Jersey, USA from Gloucester, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Themes they return to

Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.

No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.

From the biographies

Stephen Crane: newark, new jersey, badenweiler, the red badge of courage, maggie: a girl of the streets, literary naturalism, frank norris, theodore dreiser. William Ernest Henley: gloucester, woking, invictus, thomas edward brown, joseph lister, in hospital sequence, anna boyle, margaret emma henley.

Poems that secretly rhyme

The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.

A slant of sun on dull brown walls
Stephen Crane
76%
Compare
Suicide
William Ernest Henley
A slant of sun on dull brown walls
Stephen Crane
75%
Compare
Invictus
William Ernest Henley
A slant of sun on dull brown walls
Stephen Crane
74%
Compare
Life is bitter
William Ernest Henley
A slant of sun on dull brown walls
Stephen Crane
74%
Compare
Operation
William Ernest Henley
War Is Kind
Stephen Crane
73%
Compare
When the wind storms by with a shout
William Ernest Henley

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Stephen Crane: Irony, Sorrow, Despair. William Ernest Henley: Sorrow, Despair, Longing.

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